Yesterday Adam, our director of marketing, and I ventured out to Iowa City for a talk with the school’s PRSSA chapter. We had quite the adventure in the 7 hours the trip ended up taking us from start to finish.
First of all, it was raining like crazy on our drive there. The good thing about the rain? Rainbows! We saw not one, but TWO rainbows, and both ends of them. It was like we were driving through to the Wizard of Oz!
Once we got to Iowa City, a city neither of us are very familiar with, we proceeded to drive through flooded streets, in the dark, trying to find our way without hitting anyone crossing the street. We found the parking lot, but the next challenge was to get into the building by either wading through about ankle deep standing water, or climing up a muddy hill with dress shoes on. We chose the second option, and let’s just say we began our talk with mud all over our pants and shoes. Fun first impression!
The PRSSA group was great. Very engaging and interested in what we had to say. We love reaching out to student groups to offer any type of wisdom and insight we can into the industry. This group in particular was interested in event planning and marketing so we had some pretty great stories to share. We met some great students who already had some interesting and valuable internships that will no doubt serve them well in the future. For me, it is great to talk to students like this because I still remember being very motivated and driven in college, but not really knowing if any of it was going to pay off in the end. Now that I am lucky enough to have a great job, all I want to tell those students is that don’t worry, it really will work out in the end. Keep doing what you are doing. We may have even locked up a workshop spot at their regional conference to come in and give some more students real life problems to work on. Can’t wait!
After, the group told us about $2 wings at Summit, one of the local bars. We met up with one of our former interns who still goes to Iowa and definitely dominated some wings. $14 for 3 baskets of wings and 3 beers? Makes me miss college towns!
We made it back about midnight. No fun stories on the way home, except we made it without either one of us falling asleep in the car. Success!
